Gov. Chris Christie is blowing a racist dog whistle to attract attention to his collapsing presidential aspirations.
The New Jersey governor has been relegated to the Republican undercard debate, where he repeatedly touted his "law and order" credentials Tuesday night as a former prosecutor, and the following day he attacked "lawless" civil rights protesters, reported the Washington Post.
Christie was asked about protests against perceived racism at the University of Missouri and Yale University, and he blamed President Barack Obama for encouraging students to undermine civic order.
"I think part of this is a product of the president’s own unwillingness and inability to bring people together," Christie said at a campaign event in Iowa.
"When people think justice is not applied evenly and fairly, they take matters into their own hands," Christie said. "The lawlessness that the president has allowed to exist in this country just absolutely strips people of hope. Our administration would stand for the idea that justice is not just a word, but it’s a way of life. Laws will be applied evenly, fairly, and without bias to everyone."
The GOP candidate earlier in the day blamed the Black Lives Matter movement for what he and other conservatives say is a growing trend of anti-police violence -- although violence against police is at a 45-year low.
Some of the group's most prominent members have flatly denied that Black Lives Matter activists promote or celebrate the deaths of police officers.
Christie said he would refuse to meet with activists from the group, who have met with both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to press their criminal justice reforms.
"Don't call me for a meeting," he said. "When a movement like that calls for the murder of police officers ... no president of the United States should dignify a group like that by saying anything positive about them, and no candidate for president, like Hillary Clinton, should give them any credibility by meeting with them, as she's done."
Christie said his own children would never engage in protests as students have in recent weeks.
"We have two children on two very different campuses right now, Notre Dame and Princeton – two very different, culturally, campuses," he said. "We don’t sense that from either one of them, I don’t think, that those kind of issue exist on those campuses, or if they do that they’re leading folks to act that the way that the students in Missouri or at Yale are acting."
